The Ring and the Book is Browning's masterwork. Here his quick intelligence and jocular humour, his love of argument and delight in historical detail, his genius for the creation of character through the dramatic monologue, all receive their most extensive and richest expression. Browning found his great subject significantly but paradoxically among the refuse of the Florentine flea-market in June of 1860. Intoxicated fascination with the old document is displayed in a lively fashion in the opening book of Browning's poem. The dramatic speakers would be two street gossips and another gossip bent on entertaining High Society with his clever account of the sensational events. The psychological realism he had accomplished in his earlier monologues rested largely on his remaining 'dramatic in principle' and resolutely refraining from overt commentary in his own voice. By murdering Pompilia and her supposed parents he had upheld not only his own honour but the ancient traditions of Italian and Christian society.